Keep Bugs Out of Your Flour

An Unwelcome DiscoveryWhen you open up your bag of flour, the last thing you expect or want to see are bugs in it. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it – once you find bugs in your flour, the entire bag has to be tossed out. It’s a huge annoyance because it means you have to get rid of food as well as the money you spent on that food. But what type of insects will show up in flour?

A lot of insects like to eat flour. This is because flour is essentially ground up grain, and insects like to eat grain. This is also why you may find similar insects in foods like pastas or cereals. When you look into your flour you may find insects such as Indian meal moth larvae, flour beetles, weevils, silverfish, and other types of beetles and weevils. Many of these insects are small and can sometimes be hard to see if they are within the flour rather than resting on top of it.

Where Do They Come From?Like all pests, they originally come from outside. However, with some flour issues, it may be that they have come from a more internal source. Sometimes you may bring a bag of flour home only to discover it has already been contaminated by bugs. This can happen at any location, such as when the bag is on the shelf at the grocery store, when it is in transit, or even at the factory. None of these locations is ever excited to learn that insects have been discovered in their flour and will do everything they can to keep flour safe and fresh.

For some pests, such as Indian meal moths or silverfish, they may already be living in your home. When an Indian meal moth lays eggs, it will lay them near a food source. It may be that the flour was the nearest and best source, so when the eggs hatched the larvae chewed through the packaging and went on to eat the flour inside. Silverfish are notorious for chewing through packages to get to food.

How Do I Keep Them Out?The easiest way to keep pests out of your flour is to immediately transfer it to a plastic or glass container when you get home. Paper is easy for insects to chew through – plastic and glass will stop them completely. However, it is important to note that if you have pests in your home that are willing to get into your flour, when they cannot do that they may move on to other food sources like cereal or pasta. This means you have a pest problem and should contact a pest control company to rid your home of these unwanted guests.